As publishing costs and postage rates soar, publishers of archived material such as printed periodicals are searching for innovative ways to increase their bottom line. For example, many periodicals routinely publish electronic versions of current issues on a web site, in addition to traditional printed versions. Typically, however, such electronically available versions have failed to generate the hoped-for revenues. In fact, typically web site-published periodicals do not generate the gross revenue that their printed counterparts do. Many believe that the reason for these disappointing results has to do with the look and feel of the web product. Many believe that readers prefer the look and feel of the traditional printed product. Publishers thus have recently become interested in providing electronic copies of their publications in a form visually similar to that of the printed product.
In addition to the publication of current issues of periodicals, it is widely believed that a largely untapped market for archived material (e.g., back issues of periodicals) exists. For example, perhaps a reader would like to read an article published in the January 2000 edition of the magazine Today's Equine. Publishers typically make back issues of their printed publications available for sale to subscribers on a limited basis, so the reader could contact the publisher of Today's Equine and request to purchase the January 2000 issue. If a January 2000 issue of Today's Equine is available, the reader may be able to acquire the back issue. Such activity is not likely to generate large amounts of revenue for the publisher, because of associated costs of producing and delivering a printed publication and because no new advertising revenue is associated therewith. Additionally, the relevant information (e.g., the magazine article of interest to the reader) is typically accompanied by collateral information (e.g., one or more advertisements) that are no longer relevant. For example, perhaps the article of interest to the reader is an article on horses. The article on horses may be accompanied by at least one advertisement for a sale on horse feed, but, for example, (depending on how old the article is) the sale may be over, or that particular brand of horse feed may not be available in the geographic location of the requester.
Perhaps the article as published in the January 2000 Today's Equine is available electronically. Since typically 60-70% of the cost of producing a typical magazine is paid for by advertising, it would seem logical to exploit this potential “new” source of revenue by providing the January 2000 issue electronically, perhaps as it appeared in printed form, but with a current advertisement or with an advertisement targeted to the requester, providing the opportunity both to receive new revenue from an advertiser and to expand the delivery of back issues of publications or other archived material to readers. Moreover, it may be desirable to retain the look of the printed document, while replacing old collateral information (e.g., advertisements) with new information, for which the collateral information provider (e.g., advertiser) could be charged a new fee. To date, however, no mechanism to do this is known.